Media City Film Festival 2013 catalogue by Media City Film Festival

Christy LeMaster (USA) is Director of The Nightingale, a microcinema in Chicago, and has presented screenings at many other Chicago venues. She teaches Semiotics and Media Theory at Columbia College. She has been a movie critic for Chicago NPR affiliate WBEZ and for cinefile.info. She was a 2011 Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow and a Summer Forum 2012 resident. She is currently working on a micro cinema web directory and distribution system called splitbeam.org

COMPETITION

Saul Levine (USA) has made more

than 80 films and videos since 1964, presented in recent retrospective screenings at venues including MoMA New York, Anthology Film Archives and this year’s Media City. He has taught at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston for more than 30 years, and programmed the MassArt Film Society. In the 1960s Levine was editor of New Left Notes, the newspaper of the Students for a Democratic Society.

JURY

Marcos Ortega (Spain), is the editor

of the website / hub Experimental Cinema (expcinema.com), one of the first Spanish language blogs to focus on experimental and avantgarde films, and a major global resource for news and opinion on artist’s filmmaking. A prolific article writer and reviewer, he also currently coedits the “Fugues” section for the Spanish online magazine Blogs & Docs.

AT MOCAD • TUES MAY 21 • 8:00 PM 12

Wolf Eyes and CCMC

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Tues May 21, 8 pm Tix $5, free for Media City passholders / MOCAD members

Media City opens at MOCAD with performances by legendary artists Michael Snow, John Oswald, Al Mattes and Detroit’s own postindustrial avant noise band Wolf Eyes.

Opening night also features a launch party for the vinyl reissue of CCMC Volume Three, the lost recording now available after 35 years!

CCMC formed in 1974 as “a composing ensemble united by a desire to play music that is fluid, spontaneous, and selfregulating”. From 1976 to 1980, CCMC released six vinyl LPs through Toronto’s Music Gallery. In 2002 Art Metropole released a 2 CD set featuring CCMC’s collaborative performances with Christian Marclay at the No Music Festival and the Rivoli in New York. Regarded as one of the pioneering free improvisation bands of the 1970s, CCMC has been reinventing itself with a shifting constellation of artists and a consistent questing spirit for more than four decades. Guest musicians have included Derek Bailey, Malcolm Goldstein, Evan Parker, Eugene Chadborne, Phil Minton, Misha Mengelberg and many others. Drawing from such disparate sources as Throbbing Gristle, Black Flag, and King Tubby, the music of Detroitbased trio Wolf Eyes has been described by The Wire’s Nick Cain as “an ungodly noise hybrid which sucks fragments of US hardcore, industrial, free jazz, avant garde electronics and Death Metal into a sonic vortex”. Wolf Eyes have released over 100 recordings on labels such as Bulb Records, Troubleman Unlimited, Fusetron and Sub Pop and have toured with Sonic Youth and Andrew W.K. They have also collaborated with American composer and multiinstrumentalist Anthony Braxton. Wolf Eyes is Nate Young, John Olson and James Baljo.

CCMC VOLUME THREE VINYL REISSUE

LOST RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE AFTER 35 YEARS!

ON SALE OPENING NIGHT AT MOCAD AND DURING MEDIA CITY $1 2 LIMITED OFFER WHILE SUPPLIES LAST In 1978, CCMC produced the LP Volume Three through Toronto's experimental music haven, the Music Gallery. The entire edition was shipped to a distributor in New York who promptly went bankrupt. The records were never recovered. This notorious lost recording has now been reissued by Media City and MOCAD in a limited edition of 500 copies, pressed from the original master recordings and with the original cover artwork designed by Michael Snow. The record features performances by Michael Snow, Nobuo Kubota, Casey Sokol, Peter Anson, Larry Dubin, and Al Mattes.

In 1975 Al Mattes (opposite left) founded the Music Gallery in Toronto and was its Executive and Artistic Director from 197587. He was Artistic Director of the InterArts Department of the Banff Centre for the Arts, Director of the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and organizer of the Journées Électro Radio Days festival. JERD was the first Canadawide radio festival, linking cities by broadband telephone in livetoair performances.

John Oswald (opposite right) is a Governor General’s Award Media

Arts Laureate, Ars Electronica Digital Musics and Untitled Arts Award winner, and an inductee to the CBC Alternative Walk of Fame. His multifaceted sonic clock, A Time to Hear for Here, is a permanent environment at the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2012 the Ensemble Modern Frankfurt premiered his composition b9, a condensation of all nine Beethoven symphonies. The art of Michael Snow (below) is in the permanent collections of museums including the MoMA New York, the Museum Ludwig (Cologne) and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris). He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1972), the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal (2002), an honorary doctorate from the Université de Paris Panthéon Sorbonne (2004) and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2011). He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2007.

Retrospective screening with the artist

“Saul Levine is the foremost dissenting filmmaker in America.” — P. Adams Sitney

Directly following a retrospective screening at MoMA New York, the Bostonbased filmmaker Saul Levine visits Media City with a program of Super 8 and 16mm films selected by the festival. A legend of small gauge filmmaking, Levine has made more than 80 films and videos since 1964. He has taught at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston for more than 30 years, influencing several generations of filmmakers and programming the longstanding MassArt Film Society. In the late 1960s Levine was editor of New Left Notes, the newspaper of the Students for a Democratic Society, and was arrested several times for protesting the war in Vietnam. His work is noted for its incorporation of splice marks, percussive editing, unconstrained camera movements and spontaneous formal accidents. TV EYE recently produced two DVDs with selections of his films, Saul Levine Super 8 Film Volume I & II. His films are also included in the recently released DVD Treasures from the Archives IV: American AvantGarde Film, 19471986.

SAUL LEVINE • WED MAY 22 • 7:30 PM

Saul Levine: Raps and Chants

SAUL LEVINE • WED MAY 22 • 7:30 PM 20

“For nearly 50 years, Saul Levine has made experimental films that are distinguished by their machinegun rhythms, political urgencies, and moments of cloistered, even blissful, family settings. Levine’s is a cinema of violent juxtaposition — Charlie Chaplin hotly pursued and Walter Cronkite intoning the grim news of the day; Vietnam War paratroopers and B.B. King playing the blues; street protests, police roundups, and workers on the dole. Inspired by jazz improvisation, Jewish mysticism, visual punning, and poetic meter, as well as the films of Stan Brakhage and Sergei Eisenstein, Levine’s editing ricochets between shock montage and more tender, abstract passages. Through his use of repetition, superimposition, and fragmentation; accidents of exposure, and raw, jagged splicing, Levine creates jarring collisions among television news broadcasts, slapstick comedies, lyrical contemplations of the natural world, and intimate scenes of domesticity and eroticism.” — Musuem of Modern Art

Super 8mm, 10 min, 2003

The Big Stick

Regular 8 on 16mm, 10 min, 1973

Later Later Dutch Master Later Super 8mm, 3 min, 1991

Rambling Notes

Regular 8 on 16mm, 15 min, 1977

Notes after a Long Silence Super 8mm, 15 min, 1989

SAUL LEVINE • WED MAY 22 • 7:30 PM

Raps and Chants with John Broderick

Amazing Grace

Super 8mm, 3 min, 1977

Neil Henderson, England, 16mm on digital, 12.5 min, 2010

Evan Parker’s saxophone, seen from below. Direct correlation between what can be seen and what can be heard. Neil Henderson studied at the Kent Institute of Art and Design and the Slade School of Fine Art. His films have screened at venues including the Diversions Film Festival (Edinburgh), the Whitechapel Gallery (London) and Anthology Film Archives (New York). This is his first appearance at Media City. He lives in London, and is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Anglia Ruskin University.

INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 22 • 9:30 PM

Silver / Gold: Portrait of Evan Parker

INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 22 • 9:30 PM 24

Standard Time

Michael Snow, Canada, 16mm, 8.5 min, 1967

“A waisthigh camera shuttles back and forth, goes up and down, picking up small, elegantlylighted square effects around a living room very much like its owner: ordered but not prissy. A joyously spiritual little film, it contains both [Snow’s] singular stoicism and the germinal ideas of his other films, each one like a thesis, proposing a particular relationship between image, time and space.” — Manny Farber, Art Forum Michael Snow’s artwork is in the permanent collections of museums including the MoMA New York, the Museum Ludwig (Cologne) and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris). His has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1972), the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal (2002), an honorary doctorate from the Université de Paris PanthéonSorbonne (2004) and the Gerhson Iskowitz Prize (2011). He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2007. His video Puccini Conservato (2008) was screened at the 16th Media City in 2010. He lives in Toronto.

Kevin J. Everson, USA, 16mm on digital, 1 min, 2012 Tools of the trade, when you get your hustle on.

Originally form Mansfield, Ohio, Kevin Jerome Everson studied at the University of Akron and at Ohio University. He has made more than seventy short films and five longform films, exhibited at venues including the Whitechapel Gallery (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the New York MoMA and the Whitney Museum. Festival screenings include Rotterdam, Sundance, Oberhausen and four previous editions of Media City. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an American Academy Rome Prize. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia where he is a Professor at the University of Virginia.

INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 22 • 9:30 PM

Blue Caps

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Screen Tone

Richard Tuohy, Australia, 16mm, 16 min, 2012

Halftone dot screens, intended for shadings and tones in comic books, photogrammed directly onto raw 16mm film stock. A flickercollage of these dots was then created using a contact printer; the sounds heard are produced by the dots themselves, passing the optical sound head of the projector. A film made without any image or sound recording equipment. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Richard Tuohy was a member of the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group. He suspended his work in film to study philosophy, music and botany before returning to the medium in 2005. Since then he has created almost 40 films, first on Super 8 and more recently on 16mm. His films have screened at venues including the Melbourne International Film Festival, EMAF (Osnabrück), EXiS (Seoul) and the 18th Media City in 2012. He lives in Melbourne where he is the proprietor of nanolab, an artistrun film laboratory, and is a founding director of the Australian International Experimental Film Festival.

Simon Payne, England, digital, 12 min, 2012

A sequential pattern based on a progression across the scale of colour and tone, with black and silence as intervals. An element of chance was introduced by refilming a second variation of the pattern and overlaying it on the first sequence. Aleatory tone combinations and colours arise in the gaps between the layers. Simon Payne studied at the Kent Institute of Art and Design and at the Royal College of Art. His work has shown at festivals and venues including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), the Serpentine and Whitechapel Galleries in London, and at Tate Modern, for which he also curated a series of programs entitled “Colour Field Films and Videos” in 2008. This is his fourth appearance at Media City. He is the editor of the journal Sequence, published by no.w.here. He lives in London and is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Anglia Ruskin University.

INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 22 • 9:30 PM

Twice Over

INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 22 • 9:30 PM 28

Ambushed ’twixt Dusk and Dawn Bruce McClure, USA, 16mm, 20 min, 2012

A twoprojector projection performance. Each projector is “sored” by inserting a metal plate into the film shoe and threaded with loops in a pattern of (2) frames of emulsion to (2) frames base (200 frames). The parent signals occur principally on the border (limbus) between emulsion and base when passing in front of a stage between the exciter bulb at the optical system. The parent signal is shunted into an array of guitar effects pedals that form a matrix 2 x 4 before going to the loudspeakers. Knobs controlling focus, framing, bulb intensity, distortion pedals, delays and equalizers provide access to the audience. On October 30, 1968 at Hunter College, something resembling Michael Snow’s voice played from an audio tape, requesting somebody to “please turn off the lights”. A Lecture, scripted and performed by Hollis Frampton using a tape machine and movie projector, has since been rendered on the page as a nonevent but has immanency whenever we enter a movie theatre. In 1968 “null space” was summoned in the darkened conference room and then cut into swaths and focused to

Bruce McClure is an architect, licensed to practice in New York in 1992. In 1994 he began working with stroboscopic discs as an entry to cinematic pursuits. Since 1995 he has presented his projector performances at numerous international festival and venues including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the “Views from the AvantGarde” program at the New York Film Festival and at twelve consecutive editions of Media City beginning in 2002. He was the recipient of a 201112 Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Brooklyn.

INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 22 • 9:30 PM

appreciate the film gate’s aspect sectioned by the screen. Ambushed opens the gate onto a yard that many would estimate as overgrown. On Saturdays a whine of fourstroke adrenaline calls for the reward of a rotary blade that leaves behind beautifully sectioned strips that shape space. On the way out of the gate there is the recollection of strips shaped by decorative obstructions like figurines and flower beds and the potential hazards of tree stumps or rocks. Ambushed ’twixt Dusk and Dawn heckles the transverse of two projectors yoked as Variety Lights, putting them on stage as genuine as a vaudevillian dog act animated in corrective feedback and orchestrated from what is always the best seat in the house.

INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 22 • 9:30 PM 30

Cutting Grass

David Leister, England, 16mm, 3 min, 2012

“John and Marge Schlintz have lived across the street from my parents’ old house in Franklin, Wisconsin, ever since I can remember. John always seemed to be cutting grass, and always in a different pattern. I always wondered about this, so fifty years later, I asked him.” (DL) Originally from the USA, David Leister has lived in London since 1979. He joined the London Filmmakers Coop in 1984 and is wellknown in the film community for fabricating highquality filmlooping devices. Leister also owns an extensive archive of discarded 16mm educational and information films which formed the basis of The Kino Club, an improvised film and music cabaret than he ran in London in the 1980s and 90s. Cutting Grass is a “satellite film” to Leister’s current larger workinprogress, Woodcrest, in which he returns to his family home. This is his first appearance at Media City.

REGIONAL PROGRAM • THURS MAY 23 • 6:00 PM 32

Regional Artists Program

11 new works from Windsor, London, Detroit & SE Michigan Curated by Brandon Walley

A Meteor Falls

PotterBelmar Labs, Detroit, digital (performance), 10 min, 2013

A meteor is a random rock that blows in from outer space. One is coming now, and it will strike dead one of eight powerful men.

Forms of Awareness: Ghillie Suit Alana Bartol, Windsor, digital, 3 min, 2012

The ghillie suit is used by military snipers and hunters for camouflage. In a suburban environment, it provokes a variety of reactions.

Case Study House

Josh Romphf, London, digital, 7.5 min, 2013

Using design software to interpret model home blueprints, this is a study in how to build an environment and, ultimately, how to take it away.

Katie Barkel, Detroit, digital, 4.5 min, 2012

Gas stations, Chinese food, adult film rentals, drivethru only. The 20th century was accompanied by the spectacular popularity of neon.

Steady Progress

Chantal Vien, Windsor, digital, 5 min, 2013

Slowing time to unveil a tempest within a mechanical playground.

Rivergarden

Jack Cronin, Ann Arbor, digital, 10 min, 2013

The Huron River and Malletts Creek in Ann Arbor and Dexter, Michigan.

The Frog Who Ate the Sun

Rhonda Rudnick, Grosse Pointe, digital, 8 min, 2013

A beautiful rain forest. Layers of colourful environment and a corruption that goes unnoticed until it's way too late.

REGIONAL PROGRAM • THURS MAY 23 • 6:00 PM

They Cannot Touch Her

REGIONAL PROGRAM • THURS MAY 23 • 6:00 PM 34

Echo from My Room

Ted Kennedy, Ann Arbor, digital, 3 min, 2012

Repeating motifs of texture, outside space, absence and presence as a manifestation of solitude.

City without a Past

Nicole MacDonald, Detroit, digital, 27 min, 2013

One resident’s view of Detroit over the past four years, minus the usual apocalyptic romanticism or hype about the city’s “renaissance”.

TRSF

Matt Rossoni, London, 16mm, 1.5 min, 2012

Light bursts through the image plane in a variety of ways, producing harmonic visual rhythms.

Surfacing

Gerald McKay, Troy, digital, 9.5 min, 2013

Light is dispersed through planes of glass to create a fragmented vision of faded memories.

INTL PROGRAM 2 • THURS MAY 23 • 7:30 PM 36

The Creation As We Saw It

Ben Rivers, England, 16mm on digital, 15 min, 2012

Three stories from the Republic of Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific, concerning the origin of humans, why pigs walk on all fours, and why a volcano sits where it does. Ben Rivers studied at Falmouth School of Fine Art. In 1996 he co founded the Brighton Cinematheque, serving as its programmer for several years. He has made more than twenty short and longform films which have screened at venues including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (winning a Tiger Award in 2008), the ICA (London), Courtisane (Ghent) and three previous editions of Media City. He lives in London.

Victor Asliuk, Belarus, digital, 20 min, 2012

A strange place where in winter, among snowdrifts and frozen waterfalls, it is very warm. Men and women alike are halfdressed and hot. Their movements at the machines are perfect, fast and rhythmic, like a dance. The machines’ din sounds like music. The harmony between people and machinery is so full that they seem to be parts of a single entity. This smoothly running action is interrupted just for a moment. Someone becomes thoughtful, or wipes sweat from his forehead, or sits down to regain her breath. The people at this factory in Smilavichy, a small town not far from Minsk, make felt boots that are then sold all over the world. Victor Asliuk is a graduate of the Belarusian State University and the Belarusian Academy of Arts. He has worked at Belarusfilm Studio since 1995, creating more than 30 documentaries, and has been a member of the European Film Academy since 2003. His films have screened at many international festivals, including the 14th Media City in 2008, winning major awards from the International Film Festival Vila do Conde (Portugal) and Cinema du Réel (Paris). He lives in Minsk.

INTL PROGRAM 2 • THURS MAY 23 • 7:30 PM

Warmth

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Dad’s Stick

John Smith, England, digital, 5 min, 2012

“Three objects that my father showed me shortly before he died. Two of these were so wellused that their original forms and functions were almost completely obscured. The third object seemed to be instantly recognizable, but it turned out to be something else entirely.” (JS) Since 1972 John Smith has made more than fifty films, videos and installation artworks that have been shown in galleries, cinemas and on television throughout the world, winning major prizes at several international film festivals. Recent retrospectives of his films have been held at the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and the Tampere Short Film Festival; other recent exhibitions include the Venice Biennale (2007), the Berlin Biennial (2010) and the 17th Media City (2011). He lives in London where he is Professor of Fine Art at the University of East London.

AnneMarie Copestake, Scotland, digital, 32 min, 2012

Footage and sounds of two women: a portrait through the act of looking, finding and listening. A fragmented language of observations, questions, moments of discovery and alienation and female voices of authority. Shifting details of objects, interiors and nature. A scenario in which older women are not seen as fixed and finished, but as questioning, moving, exploring. Based in Glasgow, AnneMarie Copestake studied at the Glasgow School of Art and at the Stadelschule FrankfurtamMain. She makes films, prints, sculptures and texts, often in collaboration with the collectives Muscles of Joy and Poster Club. In 2012 her work was exhibited at Glasgow’s Mackintosh Museum as part of “Studio 58: Women Artists in Glasgow Since World War II.” She also received the Glasgow Film Festival’s Margaret Tait Award. This is her first appearance at Media City.

INTL PROGRAM 2 • THURS MAY 23 • 7:30 PM

And under That

INTL PROGRAM 3 • THURS MAY 23 • 9:30 PM 40

Despedida (Farewell)

Alexandra Cuesta, Ecuador / USA, 16mm, 10.5 min, 2013

“Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles. The neighbourhood resonates with the poetry of local resident Mapkaulu Roger Nduku. Verses about endings, looking and passing through; a string of tableaux gather a portrait of place and compose a goodbye letter to an ephemeral home.” — Ann Arbor Film Festival Alexandra Cuesta has an MFA from CalArts and lived in Los Angeles for several years. Her films have screened at venues including the Viennale, the London Film Festival, the Centre Pompidou and the 16th Media City in 2010. Her work has twice won major awards from the Ann Arbor Film Festival. She lives in Quito, Ecuador and was recently awarded the CNC Ecuadorian National Film Grant.

David Gatten, USA, 16mm on digital, 8 min, 2012

David Gatten took fourteen years to collect and arrange this film into its current form. Inspired by 17thcentury naturalist Robert Boyle, these “experiments and considerations touching colours” are composed into a formal montage following the structure of a Petrarchan sonnet. David Gatten’s films have screened at venues including the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), the Cinemathèque Française (Paris), Anthology Film Archives (New York), and Image Forum (Tokyo). In 2011 the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus) organized a retrospective program of his films that also toured to the National Gallery of Art (Washington), the Harvard Film Archive, the San Francisco MoMA and other venues. Festival screenings include Rotterdam, New York, London, Toronto and six previous editions of Media City. He divides his time between an old gold mining cabin in Shedtown, Colorado and Durham, North Carolina where he is a Lecturing Fellow and Artist in Residence at Duke University.

INTL PROGRAM 3 • THURS MAY 23 • 9:30 PM

By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging

INTL PROGRAM 3 • THURS MAY 23 • 9:30 PM 42

Strata of Natural History

Jeannette Muñoz, Chile / Switzerland, 16mm, 12 min, 2012 In 1881 a group of Kawéskar natives from Tierra del Fuego were exhibited across Europe in a tour organized by Carl Hagenbeck, a merchant of wild animals. The final exhibition took place in 1882 in Zürich, where most of the Kawéskar, already affected by disease, finally died.

A rhea at the Berlin Zoological Garden… bathers in the monument of Fuente Alemana in Santiago de Chile… searching for the Kawéskar, both persisting and invisible traces. Jeannette Muñoz studied visual arts at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago. She has been making 16mm films since 2000, screening at venues including Kino Arsenal (Berlin), the Images Festival (Toronto), the “Views from the AvantGarde” program the New York Film Festival, and the 17th Media City in 2011. She currently lives in Zürich.

Fern Silva, USA, 16mm, 18 min, 2012 “Carried by the frenetic energy of a magic carpet, Concrete Parlay is a metaphysical flight that weaves among visual kernels of the anthropic and biological worlds. From prehistoric horseshoe crabs strewn among modern refuse, stoic pyramids foregrounded by golf course maintenance, mystic rituals evoking avian gestures, to contemporary political upheaval equalized by natural phenomena.” — Aily Nash Fern Silva studied at the Massachussets College of Art and at Bard College. He has made more than a dozen films since 2005 which have screened at venues including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the “Views from the AvantGarde” program at the New York Film Festival, the World Film Festival of Bangkok, MoMA P.S.1 and two previous editions of Media City. He lives in New York and Chicago where he teaches at the University of Illinois.

INTL PROGRAM 3 • THURS MAY 23 • 9:30 PM

Concrete Parlay

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Lagos Island

Karimah Ashadu, Nigeria / England, digital, 5 min, 2012

The artist constructed a “Camera Wheel Mechanism” from scrap wood and a found tire, inspired by the hawkers and labourers of Lagos and their ubiquitous, overburdened, handmade carts. As the unwieldly mechanism is pushed, a camera encased within records a constantly shifting perspective of the Lagos Island coast. Although the Camera Wheel is playful, the atmosphere is tense. The Lagos city government will soon be “cleaning up” the area. Karimah Ashadu studied at the Reading School of Arts and the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. Her work has screened at venues including Transmediale (Berlin), Videoholica (Bulgaria) and the Australian International Experimental Film Festival. She was the 2011 Artist in Residence at the African Artists’ Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria. This is her first appearance at Media City. She lives in Lagos and London.

Basma Alsharif, Palestine / France, digital, 24 min, 2013 The Gaza Strip as a microcosm for a decline in civilization, finding perspective in a domesticity that is complicated, derelict, impossible to separate from its politics. Born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, Basma Alsharif relocated to France, attended the Malmö Art Academy in Sweden and later earned an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has since lived and worked in Jordan, Lebanon, the UAE and Egypt. She works in moving and still images, installation and sound, with exhibitions and screenings at venues including the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, VideoBrasil, Manifesta 8 and the Sharjah Bienniale. This is her first appearance at Media City.

INTL PROGRAM 3 • THURS MAY 23 • 9:30 PM

Home Movies Gaza

INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 24 • 7:30 PM 48

Bat El Drinking Water and Other Signs Jonathan Schwartz, USA, 16mm on digital, 13 min, workinprogress

“Sit down for a moment. It moves fast but try for the regular things, maybe even neutral ones if that seems possible. Something simple, have a drink of water, it’s hot, everyone is thirsty. Take a breath. The place is always changing. I know this from trusting my instincts while I am standing in it. If I were more honest I could admit that none of it is neutral. Certainly the animals know that.” (JS) Jonathan Schwartz studied at the Massachussets College of Art. He makes films and other sound / image projects. His films have shown at venues including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the ”Wavelengths” program at the Toronto International Film Festival, the London Film Festival, and two previous editions of Media City. He lives in Battleboro, Vermont and is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Keene State College.

Jim Jennings, USA, S8 on 16mm, 8.5 min, 19832011

“Footage shot on Super 8 in Mexico in 1983. It sat in a box in a closet for fifteen years or so. I came across the footage in the late 90s, had it blown up to 16mm, spent a lot of time editing it, and came up with this in the end.” (JJ) A native of new York City, Jim Jennings has made more than thirty films since the mid1970s, almost all of which have depicted the streets and neighbourhoods of New York. His films have screened at venues including the San Francisco Cinematheque, the MoMA New York and the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, and were presented in retrospective at the 2010 International Film Festival Rotterdam. This is his fifth appearance at Media City.

INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 24 • 7:30 PM

South of the Border

INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 24 • 7:30 PM 50

Sea Series 9, 11, 12, 13

John Price, Canada, 16 on 35mm, 11.5 min, 2012

The shores of the St. Lawrence River where water from the Atlantic and the Great Lakes meet. Four uncut camera rolls from this magical confluence. John Price holds an MFA in Film Production from Concordia University (Montréal) and served on the Board of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) from 2000 to 2008. Since 1992 he has made almost 50 short films that have screened at many Canadian and international festivals, including solo retrospectives at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Pacific Cinematheque and the Canadian Film Institute. This is his fifth appearance at Media City. He lives in Toronto.

Nick Collins, England, 16mm, 4 min, 2012

The passage of an afternoon, as marked by a window with a flyscreen, a table, a rock and shadows. Nick Collins studied history at the University of Cambridge and film at the Slade School of Fine Art. Since 1976 he has made nearly 40 short films, screening at venues including Image Forum (Tokyo), EXiS (Seoul), the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and four previous editions of Media City. He is the 2007 recipient of the Lucca Film Festival’s Grand Prix and the 2012 Fuji Prize at 25fps Film Festival (Zagreb). He is a Visiting Lecturer in Film at the University of Brighton and lives in Lewes.

INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 24 • 7:30 PM

An Afternoon

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Polytunnels

Nicky Hamlyn, England, 16mm, 20 min, 2012

The agricultural landscape of much of Italy is littered with tunnelshaped plastic greenhouses in various states of repair. In summer, when the tobacco is being watered just before harvest, irrigation jets generate scintillating light effects.

The footage alternates between long shots and structured, pixillated sequences contained within entire, uncut, one hundred foot camera rolls. I wanted to see what happens to white, translucent and transparent things when they are filmed in black and white. White shots are the first to show wear and tear in projected celluloid, so part of the film’s rationale lies in its engendering and recording its own deterioration. From 19791981 Nicky Hamlyn was workshop organizer at the London Filmmaker’s Cooperative, where he also cofounded the journal Undercut. He has created more than forty films, videos and installation projects since 1974. His films have screened at seven previous editions of Media City; in 2013 the festival will publish a monograph about his work. He lives in Lewes, Sussex.

Peter Miller, USA / France, 35mm, 5 min, 2012 Minutiæ are “little things”. Here are ten of them.

Peter Miller apprenticed to be a silversmith and later earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His films have screened at numerous international festivals including EXiS (Seoul), 25fps (Zagreb) the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the 14th Media City in 2008. Originally from Vermont, he has lived in Europe since 2004, lecturing and instructing at the Academy for Media Arts, Cologne and the Kubelka School of Independent Filmmaking in Vienna.

INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 24 • 7:30 PM

Ten Minutiæ

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Rhinoceros

Kevin J. Everson, USA, VHS on digital, 7.5 min, 2012

Alessandro de’ Medici, making a passionate broadcast to rally the people of Florence. Originally form Mansfield, Ohio, Kevin Jerome Everson studied at the University of Akron and at Ohio University. He has made more than seventy short films and five longform films, exhibited at venues including the Whitechapel Gallery (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the New York MoMA and the Whitney Museum. Festival screenings include Rotterdam, Sundance, Oberhausen and four previous editions of Media City. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an American Academy Rome Prize. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia where he is a Professor at the University of Virginia.

Mary Helena Clark, USA, 16mm, 8 min, 2012

A spy film, built on the bad geometry of pointofview shots. Mary Helena Clark holds an MFA from from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her films have screened at venues including the Wexner Center for the Arts, the National Gallery of Art, Anthology Film Archives, and the Rotterdam, London, Ann Arbor and New York film festivals. This is her first appearance at Media City. She lives in Oakland, California.

INTL PROGRAM 5 • FRI MAY 24 • 9:30 PM

The Plant

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Zabriskie Point (Redacted)

Stephen Connolly, England, digital, 27 min, 2013

Inspired by a visit to Zabriskie Point (a scenic tourist spot in Death Valley, California) this film revisits and contemporizes Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film of the same name. Aligning with Antonioni’s stated intentions to produce a film as “an idea in landscape”, Zabriskie Point (Redacted) conducts a program of visual and social research for the earlier film, distanced from the dramatic narrative. Stephen Connolly studied at the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design. Since 2002 he has made eleven films which have screened at venues including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (winning a special jury prize), the Melbourne International Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and two previous editions of Media City. His films were presented in a solo screening at the British Film Institute in 2008. He lives in London.

Johann Lurf, Austria, digital, 5 min, 2012

“The term ‘reconnaissance’ generally means an inspection or exploration — that which in the military field can be categorized as ‘intelligence’. Such connotations also inevitably arise with Johann Lurf’s Reconnaissance; after all, the film is an intensely perceptive exploration of an area, the Morris Reservoir near the Californian city of Azusa, which long served as a testing site for torpedoes and underwater warfare.” — Christian Höller Johann Lurf studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He has made eight short films since 2003 which have screened at venues including IndieLisboa, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and two previous editions of Media City. He lives in Vienna, where he also works as a projectionist.

INTL PROGRAM 5 • FRI MAY 24 • 9:30 PM

Reconnaissance

INTL PROGRAM 5 • FRI MAY 24 • 9:30 PM 58

It was a day just like any other in spring or summer.

Selma Doborac, Bosnia and Herzegovina / Austria, 16mm on digital, 17 min, 2012 “A story about what happened, on one day, at roughly the same time, to one family; about how they remember and how they put their memories into words and about how, subsequently, these experiences are combined.” — Olaf Möller Originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Selma Doborac now lives in Vienna, where she studied at the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts. She works in film and photography and has made six films since 2002, with screenings at venues including the Viennale, Diagonale (Graz) and the Center for Contemporary Art Plovdiv. This is her first appearance at Media City.

Seamus Harahan, Northern Ireland, digital, 12.5 min, 2012 Eight sequences from a larger series, filmed in the vicinity of the Waterworks (Queen Mary’s Gardens) in Belfast.

“I am interested in filmmaking that is about recording before thinking, the visual consequences of an absentminded gaze in response to the world; locating yourself, locating others, being part of the moving mass; the accumulation of meanings in the dislocation of the familiar, where narratives recede in the minutiæ of gesture and sound.” (SH) Seamus Harahan holds an MFA from from the University of Ulster, Belfast. His work has been presented at numerous international film festivals and in solo exhibitions at venues including MuKHA (Antwerp) and the ICA (London). He represented Northern Ireland at the 2009 Venice Biennale. This is his first appearance at Media City. He lives in Belfast.

INTL PROGRAM 5 • FRI MAY 24 • 9:30 PM

Cold Open

STEMPLE PASS • SAT MAY 25 • 5:00 PM

Stemple Pass

James Benning, USA, digital, 121 min, 2012

Four landscape shots containing a painstakingly constructed replica of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, one shot per season. On the soundtrack, filmmaker James Benning reads extracts from Kaczynski’s journals from the early 1970s; two notebooks written in numerical code in 1985 and decoded by Benning in 2011; two excerpts from the 35,000 word Industrial Society and Its Future by “FC” (aka the Unabomber Manifesto) as published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995; and a 2001 interview with Kaczynski by J. Alienus Rychalski, special correspondent for the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch. James Benning has made more than fifty short and longform films since 1971. His work has shown at venues including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate Modern, the Stedelijk and Whitney Museums, the Cannes, Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Sundance and Vienna film festivals, and the 14th Media City in 2008. He is the recipient of two Rockefeller Foundation fellowships and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles, where he has taught film and mathematics at CalArts since 1987.

Each image inviting a contemplation of the same space. The voice of the artist, James Benning, reading extracts from the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. On hunting, solitude, nature, anger, plans for murder, acts of destruction. He laments the impossibility of solitude in a technological world, extols the plenitudes of nature, lambasts the moral order which refuses him his freedom. After a few brief texts, a contemplation of the stillness of the image without voice. Rain drizzles, a snowflake falls, smoke curls, a cloud shifts, the light dims. The time, the stillness, the lack, all sharpen the hearing, challenge the sight, invite the mind to wander. The forest is less still than it first seemed – two birds flit across the screen, a tree wavers, a wisp of smoke rises. We hear the echoes of shots, the rumble of an engine, the skittering of paws. ” — retinalechoes

STEMPLE PASS • SAT MAY 25 • 5:00 PM

“A wooded mountain range. On the lower right, halfhidden by a tree, a wood cabin. In the distance the dip of the ridge connecting two peaks. One landscape. Four images. Four seasons. Spring, fall, winter, summer.

INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 25 • 7:30 PM

One, Two, Many

Manon de Boer, Belgium, S16mm on digital, 22 min, 2012

Three performances. Starting from different audiovisual perspectives, each section explores the space of the voice. Connecting the three performances are the themes of the individual’s body, listening to the other, and finding the right distance for multiple voices in a social space. Manon de Boer studied at the Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Rotterdam and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. She has made twelve films since 1998, exhibiting at the Venice, Berlin and Sao Paulo Biennials and at Documenta 13; in solo exhibitions at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and Index Stockholm; and at numerous film festivals including two previous editions of Media City. She teaches at the School of Arts in Ghent and at ERG in Brussels. She lives in Brussels.

Antoinette Zwirchmayr, Austria, 16mm, 2 min, 2012

A mud and fleshcoloured silhouette, rounded, dreamlike… [C]louds of steam hover across it… a kind of dormant volcano. With solemn vehemence, the image links fragility and monstrosity. The sun gilds the protagonist’s back with light, the film body flickers one last time before it expires. Antoinette Zwirchmayr works in film and phtography, having attended courses in both media at the Schule Friedl Kubelka in Vienna as well as studying at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Her films have been screened at festivals including the Düsseldorf Kunstfilmtag, the FECI Festival de Cine in Buenos Aires and the Viennale. This is her first appearance at Media City. She lives in Vienna.

INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 25 • 7:30 PM

untitled

INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 25 • 7:30 PM

Letter

Sergei Loznitsa, Russia, digital, 20 min, 2012

A remote location in northwest Russia. An asylum in an old wooden house. In this pristine setting no articulate human voice is heard, and pain is muted. Sergei Loznitsa earned a degree in Applied Mathematics from Kiev Polytechnic and worked at the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics in artifical intelligence research. He later attended the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), and has made fourteen short or featurelength films since 1996. His work has been exhibited at countless international venues and festivals including a retrospective screening at the 13th Media City in 2007. His films have won jury prizes from major international film festivals in Karlovy Vary, Leipzig, Oberhausen, Toronto and Cannes.

Austria, 16mm, 2012

Me Too, Too, Me Too (2 min): A door opens into a sick room. A very old woman lies in her bed. A litany begins with the words that provide the title, “Me too, too, me too”. We cannot access some of what she says, it remains incomprehensible… “For years, I have had to visit my mother in hospital, and I am regularly overwhelmed by the purpose of life, compassion, and an anticipation of my own passing”. (FG) My Psychoanalytic Notes (3 min): “Several pages of protocols from the artist’s professional practice as psychoanalyst. Loose thoughts break free of their contexts and flare up once again before melting away forever: ‘unfaithful’, ‘father’, ‘on 17 October, K. complained of overwork’, ‘I also think about incest and wanting to save sister’…” — Alexandra Seibel The distinguished career of filmmaker and photgrapher Friedl vom Gröller began in the 1960s. She is a recipient of Austria’s State Prize for Photography and is the founder and director of the School for Independent Film in Vienna. This is her fourth appearance at Media City.

INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 25 • 7:30 PM

Two films by Friedl vom Gröller

INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 25 • 7:30 PM

Eleven Forty Seven

Marika Borgeson, USA, digital, 12 min, 2012 Granite, metal, conifers, glass and Kspar crystals.

The work of Marika Borgeson has screened at venues including the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the “Views from the AvantGarde” program at the New York Film Festival and at Experiments in Cinema in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Originally fom Albuquerque, she now lives in Durham, North Carolina, where she is completing an MFA at Duke University and “spending way too much time in archives reading other people’s mail” (MB). This is her first appearance at Media City.

Pablo Mazzolo, Argentina, S8mm, 4 min, 2013

Conjectures about the animal that bumps into itself, aims for big things and gets sick of it all. Shot on Super 8, with all editing and superimpositions done incamera. Pablo Mazzolo studied Image and Sound Design at the University of Buenos Aires. Since 2001 he has made numerous short films that have screened at festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Hamburg Short Film Festival and BAFICI (Buenos Aires). He works with ARCA, an organization dedicated to the preservation of amateur films and home movies. This is his first appearance at Media City.

INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 25 • 7:30 PM

Conjectures

INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 25 • 7:30 PM

I Need Thee Every Hour

Talena Sanders, USA, S8mm on digital, 5 min, 2012 Deseret perambulations. Temptations lose their power.

“I was busy with my regular household tasks. Suddenly, I became so filled with the sense of nearness to the Master that, wondering how one could live without Him, either in joy or pain, these words ‘I Need Thee Every Hour’ were ushered into my mind, the thought at once taking full possession of me. I did not understand at first why this hymn had touched the great throbbing heart of humanity. It was not until long after, when the shadow fell over my way, that I understood something of the comforting power in the words which I had been permitted to give out to others in my hour of sweet serenity…” — Annie Hawks Originally from Kentucky, interdisciplinary artist Talena Sanders now lives in Durham, North Carolina, where she is completing an MFA at Duke University. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Lódz Culture House (Poland), the Naples Contemporary Art Centre (Italy) and the Chelsea Museum of Art (New York). This is her first appearance at Media City.

Anna Artaker, Austria, digital, 4.5 min, 2011

“Soviet sculptor Sergey Merkurov (1881–1952) was a student of Rodin. The plaster deathmasks he made, housed at the Merkurov Museum in Armenia, are an unusual archive, with these (primarily male) personalities from the fields of culture and politics representing both progressive and totalitarian tendencies of the Soviet era. Anna Artaker explicitly connects her film to Kurt Kren’s canonical 2/60 48 Heads from the Szondi Test (1960). In that film, Kren took a personality test created by psychiatrist Leopold Szondi to an absurd level, undermining the principle of similarity and recognition on which the test is based by means of a rapid montage of rephotographed portraits. This confrontation of a variety of references and their contexts illustrates Artaker’s objective: critical revision, achieved through processes of visualization.” — Naoko Kaltschmidt Anna Artaker is a visual artist whose work has been exhibited at venues including the Vienna Secession and the Gwangju Biennial. This her first appearance at Media City. She lives in Vienna.